After completing his studies in Spain''s La Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando (San Fernando Royal Academy of Fine Arts), the artist Ahmed Amrani (b. 1942) returned to a newly independent Morocco, where he spent a demanding period creating murals and posters for the Rif Revolts of 1958. After Morocco''s independence in 1956, local citizens of the Rif, a region in the northeast of Morocco, resisted the central government''s policies, leading to a brutal clash between civilians and the royal army. Although invigorated and hopeful following independence, Amrani was negatively affected by the uprisings, which led to the newly autonomous Moroccan government to brutally punish those involved. Amrani used his artistic practice to express his anxiety over the oppressive national politics of the time. None of the murals or posters exist and no photo documentation remains of these ephemeral political gestures. Resisting from the Margins: Ahmed Amrani''s Protesta (1969) explores the only artwork from this period that remains: a politically charged oil-on-paper painting from 1969 titled Protesta that depicts an impassioned mass of protestors chanting and raising their fists in the air. Amrani''s artistic production during this time, including the painting Protesta, has a ''strong goyesque expressivity'', referring to the late-18th- and early 19th-century Spanish painter and printmaker Francisco Goya (1746-1828). In 1961, Amrani moved to Madrid to continue his formal fine arts training at La Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando (San Fernando Royal Academy of Fine Arts), where he would remain until completing his degree in 1965. According to Amrani and art historian Clara Miret Nicolazzi, he frequented numerous galleries and museums in Spain such as the Museo Nacional del Prado and the Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía. He discovered new tendencies and trends in fine arts and was particularly attracted to Goya, who would become a major infl